Fragrance of Love in Small, Sweet Stories

 

There are too many news stories going around with the alarming buzz of stinging bees. They strike, bite in fact, and spellbind our senses. Having pushed us into a spell of craziness, these unfortunately become the stories directing, misdirecting most of the time, the course of our lives.

Catching onto some good news is as good as maintaining hope and redeeming truth. Catch it, pamper it, and spread its soft message. Not just for truth but for a more loving self. We only get what we have been looking for and working for. Try to salvage good from the reams and reams of falsehood and propagandas. Pick it up. It may not be too shiny but its essential value is worth gold. Then please allow it to glitter a bit so that it imparts hope to some fading struggle somewhere.

Shallow, inconsequential earth-shaking impacts hardly bring fundamental changes. They rake up lot of dust though, which again gives you watery eyes. Slow, gentle warmth of almost intangible steps lets out the breezy pace of far deeper, effective changes than you think.

Anne Frank: “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

The real stories are very soft and small, beyond the big-staged melodrama. They lie buried under the shitty garbage dumps of bigger issues driven by hate, malice, discrimination, oppression and tyranny. And these real stories, having the morale of the story of creation, have love and harmony at the core. We just need to sieve these nuggets from the tons of useless sand to have our shining inspiration to lead a life of caring and compassion.

In anything around you, you won't find life's lessons put up on a hoarding as big-lettered scientific principles. These are the peanut seeds hidden in little stories and happenings around. You have to crack the story and eat the message. Lessons of hope and redemptions are packaged in tiny instances.

Massive occurrences have an earthquake type impact. They too have their messages, like war has message for peace. But it is indirect by showing the tragedy of blood and death. Here you learn your lessons from the fatality that has already taken its toll.

Small stories have a direct message of love and empathy. These even give clues to build up your tiny path of redemption. These are the songs of freedom and liberty. These guide you in searching your life's goal, help you in subduing your false fears and take to the stage of life with a bigger character than you are doing presently. These tiny morals ensure safe passage for the voice of your soul.

Jenova Chen: “I would say 'Flower' had a story. It is told through the environment.”

There is a fence separating the lesser us from the most exquisite version of us. The barrier comprises the posts and barbs of insecurities, fear, prejudices and anxieties. These small wire-cutters help you in cutting through the barbed fencing and help you in meeting the best version of yourself. These small lessons help you on the path of seeking truth. And mind you, no path to truth bypasses the garden of loving kindness. Each step dispels some rigidity, taking you closer and closer to your true self.

Ram Charan: “Life is one big love story with hundreds of little love stories within it.”

Forget about rockets, nukes, missiles, bombastic egos, skyrocketing sensex, high rises, malls, fashion, militaries, cars, bla bla bla. To me the tiniest story of love and compassion is bigger than any other story on earth.

I vividly recall the story of a stork with a plastic ring on its beak, an apt testimony to our crimes on Mother Nature. Among huge deluge of jingoistic battles of egos and power-aspiring super-species, this tiny story of our crimes against Mother Nature was unassumedly tucked in a corner. But then a run for redemption with still left out love and care in human heart made it up the best story. To me at least!

There are people who aren’t looking too high. They just look around for simple things. But their eyes are special. They have love and kindness. So this good soul clicks a two-and-half year old, male black-necked stork at Basai wasteland, some 34 kms from Delhi. On zooming the picture, the birder found a plastic ring stuck around the bird’s beak. The poor bird appeared on the brink of starvation, not being able to open its beak to eat or drink.

The Wildlife department set up three teams involving their own officials and people from Bombay Natural History Society. Apart from this, nature and bird lovers from Delhi and Haryana also volunteered. Hundreds of compassionate souls actually roamed around hundreds of kilometers in sweltering heat to undo a portion of our plasticized sins. It took these soldiers of love 5 days to save the bird.

In the last leg of the search, two young boys from Haryana, Rakesh Ahlawat and Sonu Dalal, ran for 4 kms to catch the bird just before the jaws of death waiting nearby in the form of hunger and thirst. Aren’t they and the others involved in the search real heroes? They didn’t do it for a small news item in the newspapers. They did it for love. To them a bird’s life matters. As long as there are such people, hope remains. And symbolism of such acts of love lays substantial foundations of collective efforts at long-delayed redemption of our conscience.    

I remember the two pictures: one with the stork having plastic ring around its beak and the other where it’s safely sheltered in a spacious cage with a tub of water and eatables in front. The transition from tragedy to motherly care. This, to me, is the real story.

Guys, high time we start undoing some of our collective sins. Imagine the pictures: the ring of death and the cradle of life. The first, our own doing; the second, some undoing on our part. Which one is preferable? Of course, the answer will be unanimous.

All of us can be loving heroes and heroines of such small stories. It doesn’t need special effort. All it takes is to accept your essentially kind and considerate nature.